This specification relates to information retrieval.
The Internet enables access to a wide variety of resources, such as images, video or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, book articles, or news articles. A search system can identify resources in response to a search query that includes one or more search terms or phrases. The search system ranks the identified resources based, at least in part, on their relevance to the search query. The search results are typically ordered according to the rank.
A search result can, for example, include a link to an identified resource, a title of the identified resource, e.g., web page title, a snippet of text from the identified resource, a representation of the identified resource, e.g., a thumbnail of an image, the uniform resource locator (URL) of the identified resource, or any combination thereof.
For a search result including a reference to an image, e.g., an image search result, there are often numerous web pages, e.g., landing pages, to which the search result can reference and through which the image can be accessed, e.g., viewed by a user on a user device. For example, the search system may identify a particular painting as being responsive to a search query and generate a search result for the painting. Given that the painting is very well known, images of the painting may be accessible from numerous web pages. For example, each of the web pages may link to an image of the painting hosted on another web page.